The reconstruction is complete. We bought a couple of sheets of "Charter Oak" paneling at Home Depot, which is a very close match to the original wood interior. This and some leftover 1×4 pine and some resawn fir 2×4's did the trick. I have rebuilt the step/seat over the water tank, and rebuilt the dinette seat boxes. (Though it as yet has no doors for the storage pockets.) It looks pretty good, especially with my wife's paint job for the non-panelled parts.
My mother, as a Christmas present, had presented us with an IOU for new curtains for one room of our house. We decided to call it in on our camper! She made us some nice little curtains which we hung on your basic cheap rods. It really helps dress the place up, and gives us some privacy now. (They're not yet all up, but we're getting there.)
I have repainted the stripes on the camper in rattle-can red, to match it to the truck. My wife thought this was a stupid waste of time, but it makes me happy. I suspect she'll grow to like it in time. I did this in part because the local liquidation store had paint at $1/can; it took three cans.
I also re-caulked all the outside seals. The under-bed area structural wood was very wet, but I don't think it has been significantly weakened. I rigged a fan to dry it out for a day while I had the side opened up during the recaulking process. With any luck, I've stopped all the water leaks into the framing.
The water leak in the plumbing was an 8" split in the hot water tank. Looks like somebody forgot to drain it at some time! I am in the process of brazing this shut so that we can at least have (cold) running water. If we're lucky, we can even have hot. (I hammered the lips of the split shut, ground the area clean, dropped bent framing nails across the gap, and brazed to fill in.) This morning I tried it out. No leaks, so I fired up the heater. The water was getting noticably warm when the tank sprung another leak. I pulled it all apart again, and found a large pinhole in my brazing job. I'm really not that good at this, so it may take me a few tries. I'm trying to have this ready for the weekend, when we're hitting the road for a (short) trip.
(Update July 19, 2005: The brazing job held for a couple of years, but started leaking again. Upon examination, there were several cracks in the brass, so it's apparent that brazing was not the right way to go. Vibration and/or thermal cycling had taken their toll. However, now that I have a wire-feed welder, a better solution was available. [I was again unemployed, so a labor-intensive fix was appropriate as opposed to just buying a new heater.] Experience has shown that the only real solution for fixing tanks is to weld new metal completely over any bad areas. Also, now that the original tank split had been brazed, the brass is itself a weld contaminate, so the original split cannot be welded as a repair. Instead I cut a large rectangle of thick 16-ga sheet metal that completely spanned the brazed area, wire-brushed the area, and welded it completely over the old repair. Pressurizing the tank and pouring water over the welds showed a couple of pinholes at the corners, so I ground those areas down and welded again. This time, it held pressure. Some of the beads look almost: good. I think I'm getting better at this welding stuff.)Because this is an extra-long camper, it rendered the truck's hitch useless. I recently bought a used car trailer, and wanted to be able to haul a parts car across the state on one of our upcoming trips. I called around, and was getting some pretty scary costs from some hitch places --- approaching the price of the trailer! One place though, that specializes in custom welding of truck beds etc., said they'd just make something. They estimated about $300 in labor and materials. So I had them do it. I had recently nabbed a Reese 10k hitch from Goodwill for $15, which I had been intending to make into a receiver hitch for the Unimog, but it ended up being sacrificed for this project instead. They cut this down and welded it onto the bumper of the camper itself (where a hitch had been welded before), and then rigged a bar between this new hitch and the truck's hitch. (This bar takes all the push/pull stress, and the camper's bumper is providing lateral stability. Or such is the theory.) It's a nice-looking job, but I worry about its strength. We shall see.
A minor problem was that the new receiver interfered with the flip-down step. So I just took the sawzall and notched the step so it works again! Seems pretty usable, but we'll see. Of course, you can't use the step when you're actually hitched up. Like everybody else, when you're actually towing you just step up on the trailer's tongue.
